A New Approach To PTSD, Anxiety and Depression
Prism is an active brain-training therapy — what's called self-neuromodulation. By watching your own brain activity in real time through what's known as your digital biomarker — your electronic fingerprint — you discover personal mental strategies that calm or activate the brain regions driving your symptoms. What you walk away with are skills you can use anywhere — yours to keep.
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First FDA-cleared self-neuromodulation software
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Non-invasive and medication-free — works alongside therapy or medication, or on its own
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No need to re-experience your trauma
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Personalized in real time — guided by your own live brain activity, you discover which thoughts and memories most effectively shift your nervous system
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Skills you keep — the mental strategies you learn during treatment stay with you in daily life
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Strong clinical results — 67% of PTSD patients had clinically significant symptom improvement and 32% achieved remission¹. In a depression pilot study, 78% showed clinically meaningful response with notable improvement in anhedonia²
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Suitable across the lifespan — adolescents, adults, older adults, and during pregnancy
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First Prism provider in Nevada
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Therapist-led at our practice — every Prism session is facilitated by a licensed therapist guiding your work in real time
Why Prism Is Different
Traditional treatments for PTSD and depression can be highly effective — but many patients struggle with parts of the process:
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revisiting traumatic memories in therapy
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emotional overwhelm during or between sessions
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medication side effects
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partial or incomplete symptom relief
Prism takes a different path. Rather than asking you to relive trauma or rely on medication, it trains your brain's emotional regulation systems directly. Over a course of sessions, you strengthen your ability to move out of states like hypervigilance, anxiety, and persistent stress activation — and you learn, in real time, what works for you specifically.
Prism received FDA 510(k) clearance in 2023 — the first major new PTSD treatment in more than a decade. The same Prism technology also powers a depression protocol, registered with the FDA as a general-wellness device that can help patients live better with depression.
How Prism Works
Prism is a form of self-neuromodulation. The "self" means you're in the driver's seat — you're the one doing the work. The "modulation" means you're actively learning to regulate a signal in your brain that mirrors the activity behind your symptoms. Where many treatments work on you from the outside, Prism teaches you to work from the inside.
Reading Your Brain In Real Time
You wear a soft EEG cap with sensors that measures electrical activity at the scalp — the way a fitness wearable measures your heart rate from your wrist. Behind the scenes, the EEG cap reads electrical activity at your scalp in real time. Prism translates that signal into your electronic fingerprint — a digital biomarker, developed by training machine-learning models on simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings, that mirrors activity in deeper brain regions like the amygdala (PTSD protocol) and the ventral striatum (depression protocol). These regions are normally only visible with an MRI; with Prism, the surface signal does the job.
A Mirror For Your Brain
What you see during a session is a simple computer simulation — animated characters, an everyday scene. The simulation responds, in real time, to what's happening in the targeted region of your brain. As you try different mental strategies — a memory, a feeling, an image, a song — the simulation either responds or it doesn't.
This is as personal as it gets: no one else's strategy will be the same as yours. Over a course of treatment, the strategies that work for you become reliable, repeatable, and yours to use in daily life.
Two Protocols Two Targets
Prism has two distinct protocols, each targeting a different brain system:
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PTSD protocol — trains you to down-regulate an amygdala-based signal, calming the brain region central to fear, threat detection, and hypervigilance. Also used at our practice for anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and emerging research applications in ADHD.
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Depression protocol — trains you to up-regulate a reward-system signal (the ventral striatum), the brain network involved in motivation, pleasure, and the ability to feel joy. Especially relevant for anhedonia.
What a Session Feels Like
You sit in a quiet room in front of a computer monitor. A soft EEG cap is placed gently on your head — no needles, no scans, nothing invasive. Your provider helps you get comfortable.
For PTSD patients, a typical course is 15 sessions over 8 weeks — twice a week, about 45 minutes each. Some treatment plans are shorter; the depression protocol can be 10–15 sessions over 5–8 weeks.
A Licensed Therapist By Your Side
At many Prism sites, sessions are facilitated by trained technicians. At Cairn Center, every session is led by a licensed therapist — in the room with you throughout, guiding your exploration of mental strategies, providing real-time feedback as you find what works, and helping you refine the techniques you'll carry into daily life. That clinical presence isn't required by the device; it's how we maximize each session and accelerate the development of strategies you can use outside the room.
During A Session
You watch a simple animated scene on the screen. For PTSD, the scene is a quiet waiting room with characters who become loud and agitated; your goal is to settle them by finding the mental strategy — a memory, a feeling, an image — that calms your nervous system. For the depression protocol, the scene shows a dog who wants their owner to come outside; your goal is to find the strategy that brings energy and motivation forward.
The session is broken into short cycles of a few minutes each, with brief breaks in between. Most patients describe Prism as:
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focused and calming
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mentally engaging rather than emotionally overwhelming
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noninvasive and quiet
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different from talk therapy — you can do the work without revisiting the trauma in session
Side effects are uncommon and usually mild. The most often reported are temporary headache or fatigue after a session, which typically resolve on their own.
Between Sessions
You're encouraged to practice your most effective mental strategies in daily life — the more you practice, the more automatic they become. Patients often share that, by the end of treatment, the strategy is something they reach for without thinking.
Research Findings
PTSD
Prism's FDA clearance was based on a multi-center clinical trial of 79 patients with PTSD, who each completed 15 sessions over 8 weeks. Three months after completing treatment:
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67% had clinically significant symptom improvement on standard PTSD measures (CAPS-5)
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32% achieved remission (absence or near-absence of symptoms)
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Significant improvement across all symptom clusters, including sleep
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90% patient compliance with the full treatment course
Adverse events were mild and transient — most commonly temporary headache or fatigue.¹
Depression
A pilot study of the depression protocol — 10 sessions — produced encouraging early results:
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78% clinically meaningful response on standard depression measures (HDRS)
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76.5% improvement in anhedonia on standard depression measures (SHAPS-C)
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32% remission (absence or near-absence of symptoms)
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85% patient satisfaction
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Large effect sizes for both depression (1.22) and anhedonia (0.92)
A 15-session course is recommended for the most robust and sustained outcomes. The depression protocol is registered with the FDA as a general-wellness device; research evidence continues to develop.²
A New Category of Mental Health Treatment
Prism is part of a fast-growing field — interventional psychiatry — that uses targeted, non-pharmacological interventions to act directly on the brain circuitry underlying mental health conditions. The field also includes TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and deep brain stimulation.
“Interventional techniques like neurofeedback may prove as transformative as interventional cardiology has been for cardiac care.”
— Charles R. Marmar, MD, Chair of Psychiatry, NYU Langone Health
Source: NYU Langone Physician Focus
Conditions We Treat
Two protocols, two targets — choose the path that matches what you're working on.
DEPRESSION
Getting Started
If Prism sounds like it might be right for you, schedule a consultation. We'll review your history together and discuss whether Prism — and which protocol — is the right fit.
Call us today at (702) 508-9461
References:
¹ Fruchter, E., Goldenthal, N., Adler, L. A., Gross, R., Harel, E. V., Deutsch, L., Nacasch, N., Grinapol, S., Amital, D., Voigt, J. D., & Marmar, C. R. (2024). Amygdala-derived-EEG-fMRI-pattern neurofeedback for the treatment of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder: A prospective, multicenter, multinational study evaluating clinical efficacy. Psychiatry Research, 333, 115711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115711
² Amital, D., Gross, R., Goldental, N., Fruchter, E., Yaron-Wachtel, H., Tendler, A., Stern, Y., Deutsch, L., Voigt, J. D., Hendler, T., Harmelech, T., Singer, N., & Sharon, H. (2025). Reward system EEG–fMRI pattern neurofeedback for major depressive disorder with anhedonia: A multicenter pilot study. Brain Sciences, 15(5), 476. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15050476